Outsourcing your software development work can be a blessing in disguise for your organization if you choose the right vendor and the right engagement model that will help best serve your requirements. Organizational leaderships are often in a dilemma on whether or not to take the outsourcing route and hand over mobile application development or software testing to a vendor who offers such services as offshore development or offshore testing services.

This article gives some food for thought on the subject and explains some aspects you might want to consider to see how partnering with an IT services company for outsourcing your software development needs, might make sense for your organization.

Focus on your core business

Simply put, it is wise to invest most of your time and money in doing what you do best. With a reliable vendor such as an offshore development center taking meticulous care to ensure the software being built is meeting end-user requirements and business needs, your role in bringing the software to life should ideally not have to go beyond that of a business user – telling them what you need, why you need it and later testing the software to ensure it is doing what is meant to.

So if you are a firm that manufactures medical equipment or a clinic that serves patients, have your in-house staff help you with those aspects of your core business, while a rock-solid outsourced technology team takes care of complementing your operations with suitable software applications. A mechanism such as this when set up and executed well, can really help improve your overall bottom-line.

Focusing on your core business does not mean you should have limited involvement or visibility into the offshore vendor’s work. You definitely should have complete insight and visibility into the vendor’s work on your project and that’s where choosing the right one to work with becomes really important.

Choose an IT outsourcing company that has well-established and clearly defined processes, practices and tools – those that allow for seamless collaboration, transparency, regular communication/reporting and regular milestones for tangible deliverables. With adequate insight into what’s happening on the vendor front and visibility as to how our software is taking shape, you will be in good stead to focus on your core business while your vendor helps strengthen your technology muscle.

Outsourcing may be ideal for you depending on the nature of your requirement

Consider outsourcing software development work based on the nature of your requirement. Are you looking for a set of niche skills not easily available in the market? Are you looking for resources with a good combination of technology experience, skillsets and domain knowledge but only for a period of a few months? Or perhaps a strong technology team that can partner with you in the long-term journey and evolution of your product based on the vision and roadmap you have in mind?

If any of these sounds like you, it is definitely advisable to explore outsourcing options. IT outsourcing companies (service providers) often provide you with a ‘best-fit’ answer to your needs – whether it is the unique set of skillsets you need or the tailored kind of engagement model (short-term, long-term or sporadic). While you reap all the benefits of having the right talent engage with you for as long as you need, you also save the time, effort and cost of coming up with such an arrangement in-house.

Cost Reduction – on multiple fronts

Hiring and building in-house software development teams comes with its own price tag. There are the headhunting costs, the hiring costs, the annual salaries/benefits and other overheads of engaging full-time in-house employees, as well as the cost of procuring and maintaining IT infrastructure for software development. When your core business is in a different line, and your software needs are not the same but constantly evolving with time, it makes sense to outsource the entire gamut of work whether it is software design, software development or software testing to a vendor who can flexibly scale team size and team composition to meet your ongoing requirements. It proves to be much more cost-effective for you in the long run.

These are a few key considerations to keep in mind when deciding on whether it would benefit you to choose a technology partner for outsourcing your software development requirements to. If this resonates with you, and if you would like to learn more, Contact Us to explore what the different possibilities and options are, and find out what’s the ‘best-fit’ offering for you!